


guardian angel

by exquisitelymorose



Category: The Flight Attendant (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Healing, If You Squint - Freeform, Meet Again, Relapse, soft, they both have a crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28870845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exquisitelymorose/pseuds/exquisitelymorose
Summary: "Miranda starts to move, to push past her for the door, “I said I had to go.”But Cassie isn’t ready and goddamnit, she’s going to have a say in this. At least once. She flings herself back against the door and Miranda rolls her eyes, of course she does, because even though she’s mad, she knows this is all a little silly and dramatic. And she’s dealt with greater threats than a blonde in stilettos."A series of encounters between Cassie & Miranda post finale.
Relationships: Cassie Bowden/Miranda Croft
Comments: 12
Kudos: 61





	1. showered, clothed, sponsor

It’s a farm grip on her upper arm but not too firm, not violent or wounding. 

Steady, stabilizing. 

“Up, now.” 

She hasn’t seen Miranda in four months and suddenly, there she is. Unchanged, unmoved. The same severe face and muted black outfit. 

Cassie can feel that on her other side there’s a twinned pressure but this isn’t stabilizing. It’s possessive and insistent, fingertips digging into the skin of her thigh. She blinks, once, twice and focuses on the man just inches from her. She’s sat in a booth with him but he isn’t familiar. The room spins and she feels she needs to remind herself to breathe. 

“Hey lady, we’re actually kind of talking.”

Mirandas face morphs, from serious, harsh lines to feigned shock, “oh, really?”

The guy, whoever he is, nods and opens his mouth but Miranda is already speaking again.

“That’s funny because from where I sat, it was pretty easy to tell she wasn’t able to do much talking anymore,” she whispers venomously, leaning across Cassie so he can hear her clearly. Cassie can smell the shampoo or the perfume, tobacco vanilla, “now if you’d remove your hand so I don’t have to do it for you.”

And he does, quickly. 

Cassie is suddenly being yanked from the booth, its dim light and comfortable seat, into the open air of the mostly quiet bar they’re in. It must be early still. The place is pretty clear, the music is low. She tries to keep focus on taking even steps but Mirandas hand is still on her arm, Miranda is still inches away from her and it’s been four months and where the fuck has she been and why is she here? In a dive bar in the lower east side when she should most certainly be anywhere else and Cassie, well, she should be too.

They’re through the door before Cassie can really process that this is actually happening and the crisp air and the sunlight is startling. Miranda is turning back to her before she can stop herself from taking another step and their feet collide and the entire right side of her is suddenly pressed up against what seems to be several layers of black coat and blouse and her shoulder smashes Mirandas hard enough that she thinks it probably hurt both of them. Suddenly, she thinks she may cry.

Miranda takes a step back as she sighs in a way Cassie can only hear as… tired. Exhausted.

“Okay,” the older woman says almost too softly, “okay, you’re okay.” She rubs an arm over Cassies shoulder before adding, “lets not do this here.”

She can’t drink like she once did, she muses, as Miranda hands her a bottle of water and she realizes she can’t really remember the cab ride to get here. Wherever here is. 

A seemingly too nice hotel room. 

“Just lie down,” Miranda tells her firmly and Cassie wonders if she’s frustrated or disappointed in her or angry for some reason so she scoffs because she has no right to be.

“Why don’t _you_ lie down?”

Miranda raises an eyebrow as the corner of her mouth lifts in the most infuriatingly unimpressed way. She’s not pleased but worst of all, she’s unaffected. Whatever Cassie says or does, she thinks, will not matter. So she kicks her shoes off and lays on the bed that is ungodly, unreasonably soft. She thinks of all the questions she needs to ask her, this money grabbing, man killing, mystery of a woman - friend - enemy? Interest? 

She falls asleep with visions of “xM.”

It’s that sick panic that knocks her knees and turns her belly that comes first, then the throbbing between her eyes. It’s probably only been a few hours, she’s probably still drunk and not even all the way hungover but her eyes are open and it’ll be several hours and a few emotional spirals before they’ll close again.

“Welcome,” comes a voice from over her shoulder, “to the land of the living.”

Cassie groans and rolls over slowly, gently, to find Miranda, a book folded in her lap, back straight against the headboard. In all honesty, she’s surprised the woman even took her shoes off.

“I-” Cassie starts but she groans again, presses a hand to her temple.

“I know,” Miranda says and when she opens her eyes, she’s passing her yet another bottle of water and a few tablets.

“Will these kill me?”

“Only if you have an allergy to acetaminophen.”

She doesn’t sit up, merely stretches her neck high and long enough to swallow the pills and the water with just a slight choke.

The pillow is soft under her head but the room is too bright so Cassie stretches out onto her back and slings an arm over her eyes as she opens her mouth, “how?”

“How what exactly?”

“All of it, anything. Now. Have you been stalking me?”

“I don’t stalk, Cassandra.”

“Well that’s a fucking lie.”

“Not if it’s not for work and you, you’re not work.”

“What am I then?”

There’s a long silence.

“I have eyes everywhere.”

“Of course you do.”

Cassie pulls her arm away and suddenly the light from the lamp seems a little more tolerable. The clock on the nightstand reads “11:07pm” and Miranda seems to be reading her book again.

“Seriously, Miranda, what am I doing here?”

“You needed help,” Miranda says, eyes still trained on her book.

“How did you know?”

Blue eyes falter from the page, landing straight on her, “what did I just say about the eyes?”

Cassie groans, “I’ll never fucking understand any of this.”

“Good, that’s for the best.”

She nudges a room service menu toward her and opens her book again. Cassie doesn’t think she can eat. The guilt, the shame, it gnaws at her and the confusion of the day, not knowing where she’s been or how she ended up here. She wishes she could just go back to a week ago. Back before she’d sipped that drink at a restaurant. Just because some guy bought it for her, just because she thought she could, just because it was only going to be one. But she looks anyways, tries to steady her focus there. 

It doesn’t work.

“So what, this is just how it goes now? You look after me like some fucked up murdering guardian angel?”

“Do you not want me to?”

“No. Yes.”

“Clear as mud, you.” Miranda says and asks no more questions, flips her page. 

When Cassie finally slides the menu onto the side table without a word, Miranda closes her book.

“What will make you feel better then?”

“A lobotomy?”

“Could be arranged but not today.”

Cassie knows that she should just go home. She should call an Uber, take herself to the apartment she’s finally turned into some semblance of a home, shower the day off, call her sponsor, set her alarm for the 10am AA at John Street Church and just forget Miranda found her in a bar about to make yet another horrible mistake in the form of some fucking loser who didn’t care how well she could or couldn’t speak.

But she likes it here. She likes this bed, she likes the pillow and the warmth. She’ll always feel just as at home in a hotel as she does in her actual home. And fine, she likes Miranda. But she feels like shit.

“I need to shower, I need clothes. I need to call my sponsor.”

“Lets do that then.”

The water is warm and it eases her muscles, the tension in her stomach. She tries to forget the absurdity of this being a hotel room rented by Miranda, the woman in the next room who she knows nothing about. Instead she focuses on her mantras. Progress, not perfection. One day at a time. Today is a fine day to start again. Do the next right thing. 

There’s a small cosmetics bag on the counter that Cassie can’t imagine belongs to Miranda but must. It seems.. wrong that the non-assassin, assassin would have to do things, regular human things like take care of her skin or eat or sleep or pee. But there it is, just a bag of things any woman would have. 

Expensive though, of course.

Cassie helps herself to some moisturizer that probably costs more than her rent. It smells delicious and feels incredible. She surveys the bottle and something about the “anti aging” pulls at her stomach. Miranda cares about things. Small things, real things, wrinkles, like any person would.

She looks and feels slightly more human. But she’s still wrapped in a towel and the clothes on the floor seem tainted and filthy.

She cracks the door open, “hey, is there like, a robe or something I could-”

Suddenly Miranda is there, eyes turned away, hand full of fabric. Cassie takes the bundle from her. There’s a housecoat, standard, fluffy, luxury hotel stuff but then there’s a pair of plain black leggings. They feel warm and soft. They could belong to any woman, they could maybe belong to Miranda. They must. Cassie slips them on. 

When she shuffles back into the room, things are different. Miranda is wearing a plain black.. cotton? t-shirt and leggings that look similar to the ones Cassie is wearing now. She has socks on. Her hair is in a bun at the nape of her neck. It’s so normal. And entirely out of the ordinary. 

The side table lamp is clicked off in favour of a standing lamp in the corner that glows a softer, oranger light. The TV is on, playing some quiet black and white film. Of course. There’s yet another fresh water bottle on Cassies “side” of the bed and the book Miranda had been focused on is tucked away somewhere. 

She’d like to question it, all of it, but she’s not sure she’d get an answer so she makes her way back to the bed and settles on top of the duvet Miranda is lounging on. They both focus on the couple on screen who seem desperately, painfully in love. 

“Showered, clothed,” Miranda says, “sponsor.”

A groan bubbles up and out of Cassie. She doesn’t want to do this.

“It’s late.”

“Do alcoholics usually reserve relapses for businesses hours?”

That one stings. She feels Mirandas eyes on her so she looks at her too. There’s a softness there. Cassie knows Miranda has it in her to be this way, that that’s how they got here in the first place. She can be gentle with her. Maybe wants to be.

She plucks her phone from the side table, it thankfully still has some charge, and tosses it between them, “help me.”

And she does. They decide that maybe it really is too late to call. And maybe that really wouldn’t feel the best. So it’s a text. A confession, a request for a call, a plan for AA in the morning. It feels strangely simple, Cassie thinks, like a thing that just happens.

Then Miranda says just that.

“These things happen, Cassie.”

She’s not sure if it’s the hangover or the last two nights of horrible sleep or the kindness from a woman who is probably risking something by being here, but Cassie starts to cry. Like a small, tired child, she cries. 

It shouldn’t feel natural, for either of them, for Cassie to rest her head on Mirandas thigh, her tears soaking into the dark fabric, Mirandas hand carding through the hair near her ear. But it does. And if it doesn't, the brunette says nothing about it. 

When finally she’s emptied, she feels better. She shouldn't, she thinks, but she does. She realizes that her hand has balled up some of the fabric near Mirandas knee, firmly in her fist. She releases it along with a small apology.

“I’m happy you’re safe,” the other woman says quietly as she takes her hand away from Cassies head. She feels almost lonely without it.

“Thank you, for finding me.”

The other woman says nothing. 

She moves slowly, gently back to her side of the bed and works her way under the covers. The robe is bulky and too warm but it wraps around her in a way she probably needs right now. Miranda presses some sort of button that turns the lamp in the corner off, the room plummeting into near darkness outside of the black and white of the television. Cassie closes her eyes.

She feels, what could be minutes or hours later, a shift. Her eyes flutter and she realizes the movie, or _a_ movie, has ended, the TV is being turned off, and Miranda is settling into bed, the duvet crawling higher over both of them. Cassie feels a brush of their bodies as Miranda stretches herself out and then, just for a moment, a brush of lips against her temple. 

The other side of the bed is neatly made when she awakens. As if no one had been there at all. Mirandas suitcase is gone.

But there on the pillow is a small white piece of paper, crisp, with black looping scrawl.

_“Your 10am meeting, be there._

_XX M.”_


	2. sunday f'n brunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Miranda starts to move, to push past her for the door, “I said I had to go.”
> 
> But Cassie isn’t ready and goddamnit, she’s going to have a say in this. At least once. She flings herself back against the door and Miranda rolls her eyes, of course she does, because even though she’s mad, she knows this is all silly and dramatic. And she’s dealt with greater threats than a blonde in stilettos."
> 
> Another addition in a series of encounters between Miranda & Cassie.

She finds herself wondering about Miranda. If her life is as glamorous as Cassie thinks it must be. 

Does she have an apartment here in New York? Maybe some small but grand place in Paris that’s all dark, moody velvet and a window to blow cigarette smoke from? Or some secluded house on an empty plot of land back home, wherever home is. Glasgow, she thinks, but things are a little fuzzy from that time. Cassie can’t quite picture her in the midst of nowhere, somewhere quiet. But she can’t really imagine her mingling with an elderly neighbour in an elevator where she has a well kept, rarely touched penthouse. Nothing really seems to make sense. 

But it has to be something, right? The payoff of her lifestyle must amount to something pretty fucking amazing. Not just well tailored pant suits and colognes that cost more than rent in Bedford Park. 

Unless of course, it doesn’t amount to anything. There is a chance that parts of Miranda are all an act. That really, she is where she is and does what she does because there is no other option. Maybe she owes a debt or she’s in too deep in a world that Cassie will never understand. Maybe if she doesn’t act accordingly, she’ll be just like Alex. Cold, rotting underground. Perhaps all she does is act in service to some higher power and go back “home” to prepaid hotel rooms and cellphones that have to be thrown away eventually. There is a chance that really, Miranda has nothing at all. 

Cassie wonders about all these things.

But she doesn’t find it within herself to ask.

Mostly because she can’t. Miranda isn’t exactly… around. Accessible. 

Until, of course, she decides to be.

She’s three months sober, for real this time. Strong enough now to admit to herself that nights like tonight, she’s a little disappointed that she’ll never be a person who can just indulge a _little_. One glass of champagne, celebratory, and move on. But she can’t. So she sticks to her soda with lime and watches as Annie and Max accept hugs and congratulations on their engagement from friends, colleagues, a few family members. 

It’s a beautiful night in a trendy bar. Cassie is happy and lonely in equal measure. But she wears a smile and plays the part of dutiful best friend and future maid of honour. She’s not sure when she’ll be able to relax a little, give up on always trying to make it up to them. Maybe never, she muses. She owes Annie at least that much. Max too. 

It’s getting a bit late. Conversations will end shortly, the DJ will start and the night will be thrown into full chaos. Cassie hopes that by the end of the night she’ll have to drag Annie off the dance floor or peel her off the sidewalk. She wants, for once, to be the one who takes care of her, takes care of everything. Another part of her wants to leave. She’s spoken with another sober friend from group therapy about it. She knows Annie would’ve understood if she’d told her she had to cut the night short, not be in a bar with open liquor and drunken idiots pushing shots on her. 

But this is her life now. 

The sober friend. 

And she won’t stop living just because of it. 

She feels her before she sees her. It’s a tingle that starts at the base of her spine, a heat on the back of her neck. Someone watching. She’s a little surprised when she turns and Miranda isn’t even trying to hide, not at all. 

She lets the pressing questions die on her tongue. Thinks of a time Miranda simply told her, “I have eyes everywhere,” and allows that to be the answer to her many questions. Instead she simply asks, “how long have you been here?”

“When did the party start?”

“7:30. We got here at 7 to be safe.”

“Then 6:50ish, I’d guess.”

“Of course.”

Cassie is stood off to the side of the bar, not really sat but leaning against one of the leather bar stools. Miranda joins her there, just a few inches to her right, and takes a proper seat. She thinks her dark hair looks a bit longer.

“She’ll kill you if she see’s you.”

“Annie? I think secretly she loves me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Lots of fun, me.”

“A real laugh riot.”

Miranda shifts a bit, pulling at the length of her black trench coat and settling it around the stool before she turns her neck and orders a whiskey. 

“How’ve you been?” She asks when she turns back and Cassie almost wants to laugh. It sounds like a question an acquaintance from college might ask or an old boyfriend at a casual grocery store run in. 

“Well, you’re not dragging me by my ear out of a bar this time are you?”

Miranda scoffs, “I did not drag you by your ear. You’re so dramatic.”

“ _I’m_ dramatic? Real rich coming from the woman who does a mystery entrance, with no warning, in a full black outfit every 2 to 6 months.”

“Would you prefer me in pastels?”

“Ew, no. That’s so wrong.”

There’s a moment then, where Annie makes eye contact with her across the room and her stomach drops. She can’t have this. She can’t have Annie thinking that on her day, her special day, she’s dragged Miranda here or thrown herself into some new plot. But then her friend gives her a small smile and mouths, “okay?”

Cassies eyes flit quickly to her side where she see’s Miranda has turned completely away. Her back to Annie. Just a dark haired woman in a dark coat. Cassie nods, Annie nods and then she’s back to whatever conversation she’s having.

“I never get caught, you know?”

“Never? You got shot.”

Miranda looks at her then, long and even. But there’s something else there. A laugh not being released. Affection, maybe.

“So,” Cassie starts and hefts herself onto the stool next to Miranda, turning to shut out the rest of the room, “can I ask why this time?”

“Just wanted to see.”

“What? If I was making a fool of myself?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well this is the first time I’ve been in a bar since I saw you last so it would look that way, wouldn’t it?”

“It might but you know what they say about assuming.”

“What is it then?”

“God,” Miranda sights dramatically, knocking her glass against the bar for emphasis, “can a woman not just check in on a friend?”

“A friend?” Cassie laughs mirthlessly.

“Well, what else would you call it?”

Now Cassie is the one rolling her eyes. She doesn’t think too hard about why she can’t conjure a better, different word or why there’s this feeling low in her belly, like nerves. 

“Exactly,” Miranda mumbles into her glass and then looks at her again, “I know that’s not how you think of me.”

Cassie nearly startles off her stool. “What?”

“I’m not your friend. I believe in your words I’m your ‘fucked up murderer of a guardian angel.’ That’s it, isn’t it?”

Miranda doesn’t look or sound upset but still, Cassie feels like she should apologize. But she doesn’t.

“What does that make me then? Your fucked up drunk of a lost soul?”

“Quite the pair we are.”

At that, Miranda swallows the last of what’s in her glass. Cassie glances back over her shoulder and finds Annie in the same spot with Max at her side. They look happy. At ease.

Miranda breaks the silence. “I should get going.”

“What? Why? You just got here.”

“Got here before you actually,” she says smoothly as she lays some bills on the bar and settles her heeled boots on the ground.

Suddenly Cassie feels kind of angry and tired and lonely all over again.

“This isn’t really fair, you know?” She says and she’s not sure if she should’ve but Miranda stops where she’s stood next to her and looks at her in a way that makes her feel like just maybe she can say this, “you just show up when you want and I have no idea the rest of the time where you are or what you’re doing. You can check in on me but I can’t check in on you.”

“Do you worry?” She thinks that Miranda probably meant it as a tease but it doesn’t really sound that way. 

So she decides not to tease back.

“I think about you.”

It seems to disarm her. Miranda is probably never shocked but if she could be, Cassie suspects she would be.

“I think about you too. So I do what I can when I can.”

“Like tonight?”

“Like tonight.”

“I can’t just like, text you?”

“Not really, no.” And it seems like Miranda actually gives it some thought and like she might actually be disappointed to say no.

It’s just in that moment that Cassie notices a shift behind her. A table is being moved from the area that will become the dance floor. Conversations are being wrapped up, coats are being slung on. Annie and Max are nearly turning this direction.

“Bathroom,” Cassie hisses and Miranda actually looks confused.

“What?”

Cassie reaches for her. For maybe the first time ever, she reaches for Miranda first and gives her a shove in the direction of the bathroom, “just go to the bathroom and wait for a minute, okay? Please?”

The room gets just a bit louder and Miranda only gives a quick nod as she disappears down the darkened hall. When Cassie looks back up, Annie is summoning her to the dance floor, her smile permanently fixed. She has no idea. Cassie points in the direction of the bathroom. Annie gives her a tipsy thumbs up and she knows it won’t matter if she takes five. 

She’s not expecting a single bathroom. She expects to see stalls and a row of sinks but instead its a dim bathroom with its own music, one toilet, one sink and a crossed arm Miranda leaning against the wall.

The dark haired woman looks at her with large, expectant eyes and if she didn’t know better she would think she’s annoyed. It suddenly feels like the most certain thing, a thing she’s always known, that she cares about Miranda. And it’s become… something. 

Something of an interest. 

“I actually didn’t think this far ahead,” Cassie says as she lets her palms fall to her thighs, realizing she’s not sure exactly why she needed Miranda to stay.

“That’s not shocking.”

“Don’t be mean when I’m trying to be nice to you. I just wanted to say goodbye, like, properly without ruining my best friends engagement party.”

“Well why don’t we go on out and we can all sing Kumbaya together?”

“You’re still being mean.”

Miranda unfolds her arms and pushes herself off the wall with a sigh, “I’m not sure what you want, Cassie. I can’t exactly plan Sunday fuckin' brunch or really anything for that matter. It’s just not-” she sighs again, puts her palms up in a near surrender, “it’s just not how this works.”

“How what works?”

“My life.”

“Your life or me?”

“My life. That has nothing to do with you.”

“Don’t you get tired of it?”

That’s it. That’s the one, she thinks. That’s the place you can’t or shouldn’t go with Miranda. Questioning her, her decisions, her life. She watches the other woman steel, see’s the walls go up behind her eyes. Knows for certain now that there are moments she spends with her where the walls are down, where she’s vulnerable. Well, more vulnerable than usual which probably still wouldn’t be called vulnerable. 

Miranda starts to move, to push past her for the door, “I said I had to go.”

But Cassie isn’t ready and goddamnit, she’s going to have a say in this. At least once. She flings herself back against the door and Miranda rolls her eyes, of course she does, because even though she’s mad, she knows this is all a little silly and dramatic. And she’s dealt with greater threats than a blonde in stilettos. 

So once again, she crosses her arms and lets an eyebrow go up as she stares at Cassie evenly, from just a foot away. 

“I wonder where you sleep sometimes,” she blurts suddenly.

“In a bed, generally.”

“There was a time where I would’ve been so scared to tell you to shut the fuck up that I would’ve rather jumped out of a moving car bu-”

But Miranda is cutting her off, throwing her hands in the air, “once again! I don’t know what you want, Cassie.”

“I want to see where you live. I want to like, have dinner sometime. And a real conversation where I’m not just waiting for you to suddenly leave.”

“Fine.”

“I-” Cassie begins but she stops, “wait, what?”

“I said fine.”

“I know but-”

“It can’t be now. It might not even be this month, okay?”

Cassie is a little too stunned to say much of anything so she just nods, mutters an “okay.”

They’re both just stood, staring for a moment until Miranda gives a small shrug, “that’s it?”

“That’s it,” she says and clears her throat because she doesn’t feel so in charge anymore and she’d like to, “see, wasn’t so hard was it, Miranda.”

Another eye roll only this time, it soothes Cassie.

Then Miranda is reaching for her or around her she realizes as the woman's hand meets the door handle next to her hip. She thinks she stops breathing, she definitely closes her eyes because when they’re open again all she sees is a flash of dark hair and a shoulder, all she feels is breath on her neck.

“Cassie?” Miranda whispers in her ear, their bodies nearly pressed together. All she can do is nod, a small movement but she knows Miranda feels it because she continues, “never tell me to shut the fuck up again.”

Then the door is being pulled, bumping her back and Miranda is sliding away from her and out the door.

Suddenly the bathroom is quiet and empty.

But Cassies mind is not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments to fuel me for another chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> I adore Miranda. I have a hard time seeing her with Cassie but love the exercise of trying. If you have any suggestions, let me know and hey, write some of your own Miranda fiction! Leave kudos and comments for more.


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